Rasquachismo
October 31–December 4, 2024
Fullerton College is proud to present Rasquachismo, a multi-media exhibition exploring the transmutative and defiant power of the lowrider. From painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, the show seeks to celebrate the lowrider’s demand for attention, reclamation of space and time, and resistance to social norms and oppressive influences. Adapted from Rasquachismo, curated by Laura Black, the exhibition celebrates how lowriding has developed past the beauty of the car itself, to a deeper representation of the Chicanx community.
Lowriding lives in the essence of resistance and cultivates the power of the streets. It serves as a performance: the artist who creates and modifies the car, the riding as the performance, and the community as its spectator. Is a lowrider an object of decolonization simply in its existence and action? The car serves a clear purpose: to protest, resist, be seen, and to do it in style. In its essence, the lowrider is a manifestation of what brown and black communities have done for centuries in this country: taken an object, appropriated it with new meaning and purpose, and used it as an act of representation, pride, and spiritual transformation.
Rasquachismo seeks to explore the themes of space and time, disruption, spirituality, identity, and adornment through contemporary art. Similarly to the conduit quality of the low rider, the exhibition highlights the spiritual nature of community and lineage, and how representation of culture serves as its own form of power. The literal translation of Rasquache means “leftover”, but the true meaning of the word lives in its ability to transcend something found and make it more powerful than before.